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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

To what extent was the Caliphate the source and sanction to the legal authority of the Sultans of Delhi?

  • UPSC 2017
  • The Fourteenth Century

The Abbasid Caliphate, in classical Islamic political theory, was the sole legitimate fountainhead of temporal authority in the Muslim world — no ruler, in principle, could found an independent state without the Caliph's sanction. By the time the Delhi Sultanate emerged, however, the Caliphate itself was a shadow institution, and its relationship to Delhi's rulers…

You are reading the opening of the model answer. The full answer is part of the History Optional PYQ Master Pack.

What the full answer covers

  • The Theoretical Claim and Its Practical Hollowness
  • Iltutmish: The Solitary Case of a Sultan Actively Seeking Sanction
  • The Khaljis: Confidence Enough to Dispense With It
  • Muhammad bin Tughluq and Firuz Tughluq: Recognition as Crisis Management
  • The Later Sultanate: Nominal Survival of an Empty Form
  • Assessing the Extent

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